Sunday, February 21, 2016

The Lead Deadwood School District met briefly on 2-09-16, toured the Deadwood School Building and issued new "Code Words" to throw the 1924 Deadwood School Building under the bus. Superintendent LEIKVOLD along with KOSTERS, and KARPINEN want "BETTER EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT FOR CHILDREN" AND "BETTER BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE". THESE ARE ACTUALLY CODE WORDS FOR GETTING RID OF THE 1924 DEADWOOD SCHOOL BUILDING!! They agreed and are going to hire consultants to study four options. The first three options are smoke screen ideas that involve Deadwood location and the fourth is their desired "move everthing to Lead".

The 1924 Deadwood School Building that has stood for years as fully functioning school. It was emasculated in 1972 and become part of the Lead Deadwood School District centered in Lead. Now it's final death knell is close! The old 1886 portion of the school was lost to arson fire in 1985. The whole 1924 brick school building was completely reburished and that time.

Mr. Burger who served 36 years as Superintendent of the Deadwood School District was saddened by this 1972 merger and confided to his family that it would be the end of the Deadwood School. All the school records in his office safe were doomed to be misplaced or lost. Little did Mr. Burger know the extent of Deadwood School artifacts like trophies/awards and anything representing Deadwood School like auditorium chairs and the famous pine tree stage backdrop.

We all need to oppose The Deadwood School Building loss or sad commercial re-purposing.

We need a NEW Dr. Howe's determined Deadwood School support and the spirit of Charlie Keene to face the opposition. Read the following historical link about the The Deadwood School :

Friday, February 12, 2016

LEAD 02-09-2016 — Following a short discussion at Tuesday’s Lead-Deadwood School Board meeting and a facility tour of the Lead-Deadwood Elementary School in Deadwood recently, the Lead-Deadwood School Board will follow a recommendation from schools superintendent Dr. Dan Leikvold to bring in a consulting firm to conduct a feasibility study on the school district’s facilities and how Lead-Deadwood Elementary School fits into that long-term picture.

Leikvold said that considering Principal Tim Kosters’ desire for a better educational environment for children, and building maintenance supervisor Wayne Karpinen’s desire for better building infrastructure, a long-term discussion regarding the facility needs to start.

“During the facilities tour of the Deadwood building, several issues and concerns regarding the building that is almost 95 years old arose,” Leikvold said. “Although, there isn’t a whole lot of consensus on what should be done. The way I see it, there are four options, and we need a whole lot more data, a whole lot more information, and will seek a lot more community input before moving forward on any of this.”

The four options presented were: one, continue with status quo.

“Looking at the infrastructure of the building in Deadwood, we could expand the classroom footprints, look at the cafeteria, there is $300,000 budgeted for this fiscal year and $400,000 for next in capital outlay, and this would not entail a complete overhaul,” Leikvold said.

Option two would entail committing to a significant overhaul of the building.

“This would entail a significant amount of money,” Leikvold said. “Millions of dollars.”

Option three would be to abandon the building and look for a new spot in Deadwood to build a new building.

Or option four, to enhance the footprint of the Lead campus and move the elementary school to Lead.

Leikvold then suggested the district hire a firm to conduct a study of the two campuses.

“There are companies that do this, that will come in and tell us what we need to do and what we need in terms of efficiencies,” Leikvold said.

“I think that sounds like a really good idea,” said Tera Mau, a school board member.

Leikvold suggested that the district interview a couple of firms and move forward with the selection process and hire from there.

Enrollment numbers for the 2015-16 school year at Lead-Deadwood Elementary are 344 students.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

DickD Comment:Jack Sears DHS1958 is a great supporter of my dhsclassmates website publication since it started in 2007. He always contributes quality posts that show his research and attention to detail. We correspond frequently and I value his council and suggestions. He shares pride of the Deadwood School/High School's quality education system and the life ethic/values they instilled in each student.

Jack shares interest in the rich history of Deadwood. I am sure you will enjoy Jack's family history in Deadwood.

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Jack SearsDHS1958

Dick, when you invited me to write about the creamery my grandfather operated in Deadwood in the early 1900s, I hesitated because I know so little about it. I remember that, after my grandmother died and we moved into her house on Terrace Street in 1946, there were a few boxes full of old receipts and bills from the creamery, but that was it. No pictures or anything of much interest.

Gradually, I became more aware that my grandfather Alfred D. Sears had once run something called a creamery -- I remember my dad showing my brother Rich and me where it had been, at 771 Upper Main (near the present "armory building"). I didn't know what a "creamery" was, or what made it different from a dairy. Later I learned that, back in the day, "dairy" butter was sold by the farm wives who made it by hand; in the 1860s, butter factories, or "creameries," began producing butter in mechanized factories in the East.

The Deadwood Public Library has microfilm of old editions of the Deadwood Daily Pioneer, some of which carried ads for my grandfather's Elgin System Creamery in Deadwood. The creamery was affiliated with The Elgin Butter Company of Elgin, Illinois, which had developed a factory system of butter making in the 1870s and gradually expanded westward.

The Deadwood Daily PioneerSunday February 1st 1903

Before coming to Deadwood, my grandfather had also operated a creamery in Fremont, Nebraska, where he met and married my grandmother, but the opportunity in Deadwood must have seemed too good to pass up. With their two-year old son (Alfred Richards Sears) in tow, they left behind Josephine's extended family in Fremont, arriving in Deadwood around 1899 or 1900 to begin a new life.

My grandfather, Alfred Sears, is the clean-shaven man with the highest hat (top row, left of center), seated with fourteen mustachioed men on a huge stage coach. On the back is written in elegant script: “Compliments of Edward Lytle Butter and Eggs, Omaha Neb, 1897.” The men were apparently all involved in the creamery business in eastern Nebraska

Upon arrival in Deadwood Alfred opened the 771 Main Street creamery. It got off to a good start and the family soon settled in at 23 Monroe Street. Little Rich Sears (my uncle) entered the first grade class of Olive "Dottie" Smith.

Alfred became an avid trout fisherman, and the family soon grew to love the Hills through frequent outings to places such as Spearfish Canyon and Sand Creek.

In 1904, The Black Hills Illustrated noted:

This creamery, the largest in the Black Hills, which is owned by A. D. Sears, is worthy of special mention. It has a capacity of 2,000 pounds of butter per day. It is now making from 1,000 to 1,200 pounds per day, and is increasing fast. Five people are employed in the work and the cream is brought mainly from nine gathering stations in Nebraska, from 200 to 400 miles distant, and shipped in by express. . . . The butter is sold in every town in the Black Hills and shipment has been made as far east as New York City.

Mr. Sears also manufactures ice cream, with a rapidly increasing trade, and does a large poultry and egg business, the poultry being kept alive and utilized as trade demands. The principal jobbing business of the Hills in eggs is done by this creamery, which also conducts a wholesale trade in cream.

The creamery grew, too, and by 1908 employed a dozen workers -- but that year the Alfred Sears family suffered a major blow when their little girl Katharine died at birth. The next year they sold the creamery and moved back to Fremont, taking the little girl's body with them for reburial. As close as they had become to Deadwood and the Hills, it was time to go back to Jo's home and the support of her extended family. The creamery was then bought by the Beatrice Creamery Company, which later became known as Meadow Gold and was eventually taken over by Borden's.

Once back in Fremont, Alfred left the dairy business behind and started a new construction company. For the next several years he built railroads, and the roads and bridges increasingly needed for the newfangled automobile.

Alfred D. Sears Construction, Freemont NB

By 1919, after finishing a construction project for the Northwestern in Chadron, the Sears family decided it was time to return to the Hills and to Deadwood, and Alfred took over the creamery for a second time. But his health soon began to fail and he passed away; I don't know what became of the creamery after that. My memories are from a later time, of going out on cold mornings to find cardboard caps raised out of their bottles on columns of frozen milk, a time when dairies such as Kelly's and Gaughn's delivered right to the door.

My grandmother chose to stay on in Deadwood in the home on Terrace Street until her own death in 1944, enjoying dinners and bridge parties with old friends like Edna Ford (an 1893 DHS graduate), Maude Dennee Ogden (who came with her family to Deadwood in 1876), Grace McGahey (wife of Adams Museum curator D. M. McGahey), Mabel DeMouth Hartley and, everybody's favorite first grade teacher, Olive Rae ("Dottie") Smith.

Early 20th Century was the heyday of railroads, and travelers to Deadwood had a choice: the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Line, which reached Deadwood in December 1890, or its competitor theGrand Island and Wyoming Central,that finished its own line to Deadwood just one month later. The families of many of our schoolmates would have arrived on the same railroads -- maybe in the same cars -- later known as theChicago and North Western, and theBurlington. No one then would have anticipated that the age of railroads was ending, and that our generation would be the last to ride the old steam powered passenger trains, like theBurlingtonthat my family and I took when we moved from Fremont to Deadwood in 1946.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

The
Lawrence County (SD) Historical Society offers old-timers and
newcomers alike an opportunity to learn more about the people and
events that have shaped our county. Lawrence County is nestled in the
western corner of South Dakota at the northern end of the beautiful
Black Hills.

The
Society has preserved the history of Lawrence County SD since 1969. Their
Mission is as follows:

***
Promote the awareness of the contributions to this area made by those
who lived in Lawrence County.

***
Preserve the history of Lawrence County.

***
Help protect historically significant sites in the County~~~ Norma Kraemer is the current President of the Society ~~~

Membership

LAWRENCE
COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

150
Sherman Street, Deadwood, South Dakota 57732

INDIVIDUAL
(ANNUAL)………………….$5.00

COUPLE
(ANNUAL)…………………….$10.00

INDIVIDUAL
(LIFETIME)...………....... $50.00

COUPLE
(LIFETIME)…….…………….$100.00

Annual
memberships run from January 1 through December 31

NAME(S)_________________________________________

STREET
ADDRESS________________________________

CITY______________________
STATE_____ ZIP________

Please send
your payment to:

Lawrence
County Historical Society

150
Sherman StreetDeadwood,
South Dakota 57732

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LCHS
has recently released a great new book “LAWRENCE COUNTY, SOUTH
DAKOTA TOWN TIMELINES”. The book celebrates South Dakota's 125th
Anniversary of Statehood 1889 – 2014. The book's visionary is Mary
Gallup-Livingston and she guided the compilation of the historical
timelines of Central City, Deadwood, Lead, Nemo, St. Onge, Spearfish,
and Whitewood.

Example
page of a Nemo Timeline:

Get
your copy of this amazing history book and send $18 (book $15 and
shipping $3) to and the following information: